As she walks alongside the Hudson River with her friend, a woman excitedly explains her intricate vision of what would give her happiness.

As a woman grows older, she falls into a deep sadness while the men around her constantly tell her to cheer up.

A man develops a deep interest in the author of a children's book he reads to his daughters. Ignoring his wife's confusion and mild disapproval, he goes to visit the author's old house and takes his daughters with him.

Stinging from his recently cut-off engagement, a young man retreats to a small town in the mountains of Virginia to work as city editor of the local newspaper. Alternately entranced and disgusted with his hermit-like nocturnal life, he finds peace and pleasure listening to the St. Anthony Chorale.

A man visits his girlfriend in the countryside and begins to realize that she loves someone else.

Talking with her best guy friend, a girl reminisces on her toxic past relationships and confronts feelings of fear and uncertainty as she steps forward into her future.

Asked by his therapist to tell a fable, a man recounts his unenchanting life as a lawyer married to a depressed, drug-abusing woman, with a disabled son he's struggling to raise. By filling his unremarkable story with sorceresses, magic, and true love, he attempts to romanticize a life he's desperate to escape.

When a young Italian girl goes on vacation for Christmas with her family, her father splurges on her in Verona, and she decides that this is what true happiness is for a child.

A college professor sets out to show his elderly mother the simple joys of life and ends up learning about happiness and logic from her instead.

When an old woman sees her son straining to leave to see the world, she remembers her husband doing the same many years earlier. In a fierce battle pitting love against discovery and adventure, she does her utmost to set him free.